Everythingturns Blocks

Ha! Well, here's 3 tracks of ET BLOCKS and 1 track of Prism. Just messing around but a couple of the ensembles continually evolve so I could use them as the basis for the other stuff. Though its kinda subtle in this recording cause the tempo is so slow... I just found 3 "factory" presets I liked and let it run for 5 minutes and laid the other stuff on top. I've just let it run for an hour or so while I was doing something else and it continued to vary! Beyond the 5 minutes of this song it gets pretty interesting but seems to take some time for the variations to kick in.

My first impression is that there is so much potential for so much variation and I find it musical kinda in the same way the Buchla was but with less unpredictability. The ensembles all seem to have their own character and can sound pretty different from each other. A couple do remind me somewhat of Cloudlab but more controllable. The documentation is a little sparse so there are some buttons and knobs that I have no idea what they do and for a couple ensembles, I can't figure out how to switch the clock from host to local... but... all in time...

All in all its more good stuff and I don't feel like their usefulness is less or greater than the previous ensembles. Maybe they lean towards being more "generative".

I'm just caring how they sound to me so sorry to not have anything to say about the programming. I have no idea about any of that really...

 

Thanks, Greg, very much as I expected—lovely moody piece, btw
I find ALL of ET's stuff to be both surprising and controllable, delightfully so, but I have a kind of blocks aversion, I'm sorry to say, which hopefully will be solved when front-panel patching arrives (assuming that'll be savable per snap…which is maybe unlikely, anybody know?) So, that's been delaying my purchase… All I care about is the sounds, too, along with powerful controls that I can figure out!
I've been really enjoying how just working with other devices in R and everywhere since I last looked at the ET stuff I do have has made a lot of things that were mysterious about them much less so now—just familiarity I suppose, no particular lightbulbs—but I do agree that all of his stuff has more than a fair share of mysterious, even impenetrable functionality! I just discovered that his current website now has more in the way of docs and even manuals on almost every device's product page, which is welcome. Nothing extra hidden there for these new blocks, tho…or for SyARia, but many of the parts of that evolved from earlier devices that are documented.

 

dcoffin
why you didn't wrote phillip a dm?
...

edit: sorry for waking up another david. i just typed "@" + "David". wasnt aware of this feature. nice one!
btw, phillip is quite intelligent in shutting down open communication. but in a nice constructive way.
so i guess you will get no answer here if snaps are saving cables or not.

 

Can you save snapshots with these blocks? I was very annoyed to find recently 2 commercial ensembles I bought in the BF sales were not only edit locked but you can't even save snapshots now either which is bloody stupid (SLOO and SLOR) and should have been clearer before purchase.

 

You can save presets, but no snapshots yes.

 

That's no good - these locked ensembles are making paid products into demos

 

i have a question about nks prestes to get a better understanding.
can presets be switched by program change midi messages from any daw? or does this only work with maschine?

 

Thanks dcoffin , Yeh, the earlier ensembles are really well documented. Hope they continue to add documentation to the block ensembles!

I am able to save snapshots in the ET Block ensembles by the way. In total agreement about SLOO and SLOR. Not to mention that your custom scales don't save with the presets or snapshots either! Very annoying. But, I was able to unlock them so I can save snapshots by creating a new ensemble and using "Import Ensemble". Blinksonic's ensembles also came locked!

 

Frustrated by no real detailed information on the individual parameters in these blocks. There are very general descriptions online but the only tool tips for parameters are the generic NI ones. More frustrating cause these ensembles have so much potential for greatness. Even tweaking them without completely knowing what I'm doing...

 

Greg, I'm with you that the documentation of the ET blocks is terse to the point of silence. That's really problematic for exploration, and since we can't share these things, even if some of us add Infos to make them more accessible to ourselves, we can't share the fruits of those labors.

I have the impression that there is a misconception about the blocks' capacity for storing snapshots. In case anyone thinks ET Blocks can't save snapshots, I have to say that this is not the case, in my experience.
I had 2 blocks and was able to change the controls and save my changes into Embedded Snapshots (not just User presets). This capacity was available for both ensemble and instrument level snaps.

 

If an instrument is closed by NI (possible since R6.2) the EDIT filed is greyed out and you can't save instrument snapshots.